Your content needs to be appealing to the players. If they want the game to have easy combat, that is their prerogative. You don't have to play with that group though, the most important factor in a successful D&D campaign is finding like-minded players.
This is a curious one, since the original time restriction was real world time, not in game time. The players had a fixed amount of time (not sure if it was one hour or three hours) then their characters die come what may. And the assumption was that they would almost certainly die, with the tournament scored on how far they got. No time for role play Doctor Jones.Having played this in 5e as part of the Yawning Portal, I can tell you that it does not matter if you rest or not.
All over the place. I’ve run 5E for the better part of the last decade in person, over VTTs, play-by-post, etc. Easily 200+ different players over that time. I’ve run several large West Marches style games, so that’s probably a low estimate. The vast majority only cared about maximum power, i.e. always prioritizing resting over fictional consequences. Adding in more consequences or time pressure, or limiting rests, only caused players to rage quit rather than engage with the fiction.
Diablo and it's clones work nothing like that! Pretty much all class abilities recharge in a matter of seconds. The only reason to return to town is to off-load excess loot.
Which, because I've played a lot (most?) of them, and I can't think of any based around the idea that you clear a level and then rest. I can think of a few where when you rest you play random encounter roulette.
This is true if you discount attrition during combat, but I'm not convinced many used it before then either. I never played the Gold Box games, but I was under the impression that you could withdraw to town at any time like the tabletop game.
what about the Death Domain Cleric then?
Confining myself to the context of 5e D&D, I think this is where the sorts of things that @AnotherGuy mentioned become relevant:
I don't see how 5e D&D is all that different from classic D&D, when it comes to the "rest economy" in these sorts of adventures. A group playing AD&D or B/X has exactly the same sorts of reasons for resting to recover spells and/or hit points as does a group playing 5e.
I'm not 100% sure what you are counting as "boardgamey" D&D. I would think of the scenarios that @James Gasik as mentioned as fitting that description: there is no overarching fiction/story logic, and the players are playing their PCs essentially as pawns. Fiction still matters to resolution, though - eg an attempt by players to have their PCs topple a statute is resolved, at least in part, by thinking through the fictional situation and how they describe their PCs interacting with it (eg using ropes or levers). I say "in part" because dice rolls (eg Bend Bars rolls in the old days, or STR checks these days) might also matter.
My experience was pretty identical to @overgeeked . Most§ of my players were older millennials fellow xenniels genxrs and even a few boomers. Given the number of tables being run it shouldn't be particularly shocking that younger ply hooked up with younger gms (more than one of which has a player at my table with some level of frequency.
That was so much the case that iirc early AL "seasons" when "dm reward points" were a bad idea still in use offered it offered playing an oathbreaker pc as one of the rewards an AL GM could choose.
Didn't say you go back to town. I said you clear and area then rest. Your abilities recharge quickly but you don't get back to full until you've killed all the stuff in the area because your constantly fighting and aggroing everything.
